Research
Research
Most people in sub-Saharan Africa still lack access to electricity, despite rural electrification being a policy priority. We provide evidence that high transaction costs, particularly transportation expenses to access mobile money agents for bill payments, are a key friction for rural households. In rural Togo, these costs account for 28% of solar electricity-related expenditures, rising to 43% in more remote areas. To assess the impact of transaction costs on policy outcomes, we analyze the staggered rollout of two nationwide policies in Togo in 2019: a solar home system subsidy and an expansion of mobile money agents. The subsidy, which nearly halves electricity prices, more than doubles adoption rates. However, the effects vary significantly: households with lower transaction costs—those with direct access to mobile money agents—adopt at much higher rates and decrease the number of payments they make in response to the price reduction. The mobile money agent expansion led to nearly a threefold increase in adoption, an effect similar to that of the subsidy. By reducing transaction costs, these policies enable bulk purchases and lessen the need for frequent payments. Our findings highlight the complementary roles of subsidies and financial inclusion in improving rural electrification and access to essential services.
Low performance on high-stakes school-leaving examinations is a central bottleneck to secondary school completion in low-income countries. We experimentally evaluate two margins through which exam performance may improve in impoverished rural settings: psychological activation through role model exposure and access to a shareable educa- tional technology — portable solar lamps. In the two weeks preceding Togo’s secondary school graduation exams, 320 rural students were randomised to watch either an inspira- tional film or a placebo; a subset additionally received a lamp. Leveraging baseline social network data and estimators that account for interference, we identify substantial direct and spillover effects of lamp access. Students assigned a lamp, as well as peers in their pre-existing social network, increase strong pass rates — the threshold conferring auto- matic certification and university eligibility — by approximately 11 percentage points. Role model exposure alone has no effect on strong pass rates but raises marginal pass rates by a comparable magnitude; we find no evidence of complementarity. We document that lamp access expanded study networks, validating the causal chain from lamp provision through peer studying to improved performance, while the mechanisms underlying the role model effect are less precisely identified, with suggestive evidence of strengthened self-efficacy.